One of well-known recording apparatus for recording on a recording medium such as paper is an ink jet printer. In an ink jet printer, a recording head unit having a recording head is mounted on a carriage, which is reciprocated parallel to a platen for feeding the recording medium for recording. FIG. 22 shows an example of the recording head unit for an ink jet printer. In this example, one end portion 302a of a flexible circuit board 302 is soldered to the right-hand side surface of a recording head 300. One end portion 303a of a flexible circuit board 303 is soldered to the left-hand side surface of the recording head 300. The other end portion 302b of the flexible circuit board 302 is soldered to an end portion of the back surface of a drive circuit board 304 for generating a signal for driving the recording head 300.
In this case, the flexible circuit board 302 and the flexible circuit board 303 are symmetrically arranged, so that two different types of flexible circuit boards are necessary to be prepared, which results in increasing the number of parts. An attempt to solve this problem is to bend an unbent, straight flexible circuit board in a direction substantially perpendicular to the longitudinal direction thereof, bend another flexible circuit board of the same configuration in a direction opposite to the above-mentioned direction perpendicularly to the longitudinal direction thereof, and solder these flexible circuit boards respectively to the right-hand and left-hand side surfaces of the recording head 300. The above attempt succeeded reducing the number of parts. In this regard, the crease portions may be secured in position by tapes to prevent the crease portions from being separated.
However, the above technique rises a problem in that it takes time to bend the flexible circuit boards in directions perpendicular to the longitudinal direction thereof and to secure the crease portions in position by tapes. Further, since the outer side of the fold imparted to the circuit board is taped, the fold is subject to rising.
Furthermore, continuity of the flexible circuit board to the recording head is examined after soldering one end portion of the flexible circuit board to the recording head and the other end portion thereof to the drive circuit board. Only the recording heads which have proved the continuity pass through the examination. If a recording head turns out to be defective, that recording head is to be disposed of along with the flexible circuit board and the drive circuit board, which results in wasting the expensive drive circuit board.
In view of this, it is an object of the present invention to provide a flexible circuit board by which two different types of the flexible circuit board can be formed.
Another object of the invention is to provide a recording head unit having the above flexible circuit board and a recording apparatus including the recording head.
Further object of the present invention is to provide a recording head unit and a method of manufacturing the same which minimize waste of the drive circuit board.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a flexible circuit board, a recording head unit provided with the flexible circuit board, and a recording apparatus which require no post-taping of the crease portion of the flexible circuit board.